1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to computer networks, and in particular to remote procedure calls. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to stub files utilized in remote procedure calls.
2. Description of the Related Art
Remote procedure calls allow for communication between application programs across a computer network. When a remote procedure is invoked, parameters are passed across the computer network to the application program which will execute the procedure. When the procedure finishes and produces its results, the results are then passed back to the calling application program, where execution of the calling application program resumes. Typically, the calling application program is called the client, and the application program which executes the procedure is called the server. As used herein, the term procedure will be used in a generic sense; program segments which are referred to in particular instances as procedures, functions, and subroutines will all be referred to herein as procedures.
Contemporary remote procedure calls utilize stub files to generate and transport messages which carry the parameters from the client to the server, and then carry the results back to the client. These stub files are generated by a compiler, and can demand large amounts of code. In some computer systems, such as personal computers, stub files which demand large amounts of code may cause the speed of procedure execution to decrease due to paging activity. This undesirable performance degradation caused by the large amounts of code may noticeably affect the operations in the computer systems.
Furthermore, the large amounts of code required by contemporary stub files results in the consumption of a large amount of space in memory and direct access storage devices (DASD) within the computer network. Preferably, as much space as possible in memory and DASD should be utilized by application programs. Those skilled in the art will recognize that this optimizes the efficiency and performance of the computer network. Thus, having stub files consume large amounts of space in memory and DASD limits the performance potential of a computer network.
It would therefore be desirable to reduce the size of stub files in a computer network which utilizes remote procedure calls. This would have the desirable effect of increasing the efficiency, space utilization and performance of the computer network.